In my late thirties, I have become patriotic. It’s one of those things that’s happened with age, like cooking to freeze, plumping cushions and thinking policemen look too young. My heart stirs at the sound of a marching band and at the thought of great British inventions: the London sewer system, steam engines, float glass. On the slimmest pretext I’ll start lamenting the decline of our great industries and tell you that too often our brightest ideas are developed abroad.
On most subjects, as we get older, my friends and I agree. On marriage and mortgages; grey hair and aching knees, but on Britain and its place in the world I am alone. Just a squeak from me in support of Britain, or British business, and my friends look taken aback, then almost appalled. It’s not just my friends, it’s their friends too — almost anyone my age I meet, and frankly I feel confused.
It happened again the weekend before last with my best and most beloved girl friends walking the Cleveland Way south to Whitby from Saltburn-by-the-Sea. We rustled through the rain dressed in plastic head to toe, past the whale-shapes of mud left behind by alum mines, down the potash steam-train tracks. Because of where we were, talk turned to industry.
Soon I found myself well under way. I had declared my conviction that the embers of British brilliance still burn under all the suffocating bureaucracy and was beginning on some of our most promising industries when I looked around. My friends’ heads had retreated deep inside their hoods, their faces tight with distaste. At Staithes, where James Cook first dreamed of setting sail, we had it out. I said: it’s exciting, Britain could be a contender! They said: but what’s so great about leading the world? Don’t we all compete too much? It’d be better if we just relaxed.
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